Related Stories

AUSTIN — When then-Gov. George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, his office released a treasure trove of information relating to his years as Texas' chief executive.

Some 3,125 pages detailing Bush's appointments during 1995-1998 allowed news organizations to remark on the exact number of lobbyists and campaign donors he met with. The records showed which state lawmakers Bush conferred with — and on what subject — and detailed how much time he spent reviewing capital punishment cases prior to executions. The records showed when he arrived at the office, when he took time off for the gym, and when he went home.

In short, the documents provided a portrait of the leadership style of a candidate for president of the United States.

Now, as Gov. Rick Perry embarks on a presidential campaign, it's unlikely the public will access records that provide any revealing details about his decadelong tenure as governor. While Perry extols open government — most recently challenging Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to “open the books” of the nation's central bank — he has adopted policies that shroud his own office in a purposeful opaqueness that confounds prying reporters — or any member of the public questioning his policies.

He has been governor longer than anyone in Texas history, but there is a lot the public doesn't know about Rick Perry. Where does he go each day, and with whom does he talk? What is discussed when he meets with top state agency executives? How does he evaluate a clemency request from a death row inmate? Or an application for a grant from his Emerging Technology Fund? What opinions are expressed to him through email, and how does he respond?

Those are just some of the questions left largely unanswered by Perry's decisions to bar the public from viewing details of his travel, his daily schedule and most of his emails.

Over the past decade, the Perry administration has withheld information in response to some 100 open records requests, instead seeking review by the Texas attorney general's office. In two cases in the past year, Perry's office acknowledges it failed to meet legal deadlines for responding to the requests, or otherwise delayed in violation of well-established procedures outlined in the Texas Public Information Act.

Most of the withheld documents involved contracts, bidding and oversight of programs in which state money flows to entrepreneurs, privately held companies and universities from Perry's two economic development funds, the Emerging Technology Fund and the Texas Enterprise Fund.

In some cases, the requests involve entities headed by Perry campaign donors and political appointees. Perry also chose to withhold information when third parties complained they would release proprietary information or violate trade secrets.

Among the information withheld from public view were communications between Amazon and the governor and his staff concerning the company's recent dispute with the state of Texas over a $269 million sales tax bill.

He has declined to release staff notes and emails relating to the Emerging Technology Fund and records relating to appointments to the advisory committee that oversees its grant applications. He also withheld emails and phone logs relating to a $4.5 million Emerging Technology Fund grant awarded to Convergen Life Sciences, a company owned by campaign contributor David Nance.

The Houston Chronicle has a lawsuit pending regarding Perry's decision on a clemency request in 2004 by Cameron Todd Willingham, whose capital murder conviction stirred debate over the science of arson investigations. Perry refused the newspaper's request to release his staff's analysis or comments about Willingham's request for clemency, which raised new evidence. Willingham was executed Feb. 17, 2004.

Previous Texas governors released their reviews of execution cases. Perry's office has maintained that any documents showing his views or staff discussion aren't public record. He has presided over more than 200 executions as governor.

Perry's office maintains he's committed to open government and withholds information only to protect his personal safety, public safety or important business secrets. Some of his decisions in favor of secrecy, however, have generated considerable controversy over the years.

Houston attorney Joe Larsen, who represents the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said he believes Perry's office is violating state law by automatically purging all staff members' computers of emails older than seven days.

Perry's office has said it prints and saves documents subject to open records laws and government document retention schedules. Larsen said he believes vital records are lost by the automatic purge policy, and notes that state law requires records be saved in an electronic, searchable form.

“There is a huge cache of information regarding Perry's time as governor of Texas that is gone or virtually inaccessible — information in which the citizens of the entire country now have vital interest, given his candidacy for president,” Larsen said. “For those who believe limited government is a basic conservative value, this pattern of shielding his office from public scrutiny should give pause.”

In May 2008, Larsen filed a complaint with the Texas attorney general's office on behalf of a Wisconsin blogger and open government advocate seeking Perry's emails. The AG declined to intervene on the grounds that the governor's office said it followed the state's document retention schedule by printing and filing protected emails.

Larsen finds that implausible.

“It is unlikely, logistically almost impossible, that Perry's office actually kept a hard copy of all emails that would have fallen within the records retention schedule,” he said. “It's just not going to happen in a busy office.”

During last year's gubernatorial campaign, Democratic challenger Bill White accused Perry of hardly working, noting his official schedule for one six-month period provided evidence he worked an average of seven hours a week, and included 38 week days with “no state scheduled events.” Perry responded, “Just because it is not written down doesn't mean I'm not out there working for the people of Texas.”

In contrast to Bush's extensive appointments records, Perry has left the country without it being reflected on his public schedule. Reporters learned he took a 2004 trip to the Bahamas with San Antonio businessman James Leininger, a Perry campaign donor, and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist after he was spotted scuba-diving by a tourist. The trip didn't appear on his schedule released under the state Public Information Act.

At the time, press secretary Kathy Walt acknowledged that Perry had begun releasing a far less complete report of his time after hiring a new scheduler. She also noted that “the Open Meetings Act and the Public Information Act have certain exemptions.”

Most of Perry's travel is paid by campaign funds and detailed reports aren't required to be disclosed. After the Bahamas trip, newspapers requested and got copies of the expenses paid for Perry's Department of Public Safety security detail — and noted that the state picked up the tab for scuba equipment to accompany the governor. Since then, Perry has blocked public viewing of his security detail's travel expense reports.

The San Antonio Express-News and the Houston Chronicle have sued for the records. Two lower court rulings favored the newspapers, but the Texas Supreme Court in June agreed with Perry that his personal safety concerns were grounds for withholding the information.

Before that ruling was announced, proposed legislation keeping the governor's travel security expenses private drew controversy in the Texas Legislature. The bill died in a Senate committee after lawmakers objected that the public should know if a state official misused a travel security detail.

Perry leaned on lawmakers to include language in a school finance bill passed in the Legislature's special session that would keep secret for 18 months the travel vouchers of his security team. Until then, the public would be able to view only summary reports that disclose a trip's destination, but not specific businesses visited or the names of family members accompanying the governor.